This, to my sorrow, is what I realised; a good deal even struck me with sudden fear. At last I felt, however, that if only I could be strong enough to take sides against myself and what I most loved I would find the road to truth and get solace and encouragement from it—and in this way I became filled with a sensation of joy far greater than that upon which I was now voluntarily turning my back.
6.
I was in love with art, passionately in love, and in the whole of existence saw nothing else than art—and this at an age when, reasonably enough, quite different passions usually possess the soul.
7.
Goethe said: “The yearning spirit within me, which in earlier years I may perhaps have fostered too earnestly, and which as I grew older I tried my utmost to combat, did not seem becoming in the [pg 087] man, and I therefore had to strive to attain to more complete freedom.” Conclusion?—I have had to do the same.
8.
He who wakes us always wounds us.
9.
I do not possess the talent of being loyal, and what is still worse, I have not even the vanity to try to appear as if I did.